


We borrow from the winter these

by jibrailis



Category: Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-22
Updated: 2011-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-15 21:12:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jibrailis/pseuds/jibrailis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cap and Almanzo go sleighing and dream of bigger things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We borrow from the winter these

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is all because of weatherfront. She started it.

"Borrow your brother's sleigh," Cap says. "We'll pick up the girls after church and go sleighing." And Almanzo suddenly knows what it is like to be a pig trussed up and tied with string for the fire.

"No," he says slowly, and that should be enough, but Cap Garland pushes forward on his heels so that his breath is cold and painful against Almanzo's face. They are standing in the middle of the deadened fields, surveying Almanzo's plans for the spring, and there is no one around to see them. No one ventures this far when the fields are white instead of honey gold sighing with the sound of growing wheat, when he can run his hand through his Dakota crop and watch his hand disappear among the stems with a familiar rustle. Almanzo hates snow for many reasons, winter hunger and blindness least among them, but he hates it most for its silence.

And on the subject of sleighs: sleighs are for men who have households, or men who want to go a-courting. Sleighs are for settling in your children and wife, or the girl you want to impress, and then sitting in the front with the horses. Sleighs are heavy and warm and so difficult to maneuver when the weather gets bad and there's ice glittering on the ground, frozen cracks every bit as dangerous as they look when you're driving fast in a hurry. Almanzo prefers his buggy.

"The girls will be so happy," Cap says, grinning. "And you're a gentleman, aren't you? Don't you want to make the girls of De Smet happy?"

"Are they all going to fit in the back of Roy's sleigh?" Almanzo asks dryly.

"Naw, just two of them," Cap says. "And me."

Almanzo says no again, and Cap makes a sound of disappointment before he's wandering further into the fields, the snow drenching the bottom of his trousers wet. When they return inside is when he takes off his trousers, rolls them into a careful bundle, puts them on a chair, and then climbs onto Almanzo's lap.

Later, when Cap has Almanzo in his hand and he's thumbing him and smiling with feline appreciation, Almanzo squeezes his eyes shut and grunts, "Fine. _Fine_. We'll take the girls sleighing after church."

"You aren't my only friend in town, you know," Cap says agreeably. Then he licks his prize in one easy glide, from root to tip, and Almanzo shudders. "You just have the biggest cock."

"Cap Garland, your devil-damned  _mouth_ ," Almanzo says. 

"What about my mouth?"

"If you don't put it on me, I'll thrash you."

Cap looks more excited by this notion than he ought to, and Almanzo lets himself imagine the rough leather scrape of his belt against all that white skin. Cap tans during the sweltering months, working in the fields under the sun, but in winter the colour fades. Almanzo can tell time by Cap's skin, and thrashing him in November would leave a mark for sure, a blemish like a river cutting through acres of bending prairie. Cap would let him do that to him. Cap would let him do that to him and enjoy it, no doubt. He would likely be the one to eagerly slide the belt from Almanzo's trousers and hand it to him, and then bend over the table with his legs spread and his feet planted on the floor, bracing for the harsh swing of Almanzo's forearms. Almanzo can imagine the sounds Cap would make, whorish and broken, and he clenches his fingers tight as he comes in Cap's mouth. Cap runs his hands up and down Almanzo's thighs, admiring, as he draws out the last of Almanzo's indecent pleasure onto his thirsting tongue.

"You look like a beast," Cap says dreamily, licking his fingers clean. "You look like the last of Old Man Carroll's mustangs, the rawish red one, the one we could never break."

"Red?" Almanzo says. "Nothing about me is red."

"Except your mouth," Cap says, crawling forward for a kiss. "Do you even know how red your mouth is right now?" He starts laughing, his shoulders shaking with boyish mirth. "Are you going to go to church tomorrow with that red mouth, Manly? Are you going to use it to sing the hymns and then kiss me afterwards? I'd like that," he adds. "I'd like... to have you right in the middle of the church, during Sunday service."

Almanzo pulls back. Then he smiles. He weaves his fingers through the hair that curls softly at the nape of Cap's neck. He pulls him in almost too harshly, forcing Cap to recapture his balance when his knees knock together. There are parts of Cap's body where it seems like he hasn't yet fully grown into who he will one day be, where he shivers between boy and man, between town and forest, between cultivated lands and the fierce unknown terrain of _not here_. Almanzo, giving himself the plainspoken honesty that he expects from others, would have to admit that he likes those parts best. He finds them fascinating; he can examine the calloused arch of Cap's bare feet for hours by wax light.

"When you die," he says, speaking of such matters the way any man who makes his living by the turn of the seasons does, "the Lord won't know what to do with you. I'll tell it to you now so none of the pastors have to."

"I'll never die," says Cap, and then kisses him again, sweeter than rainfall.

 

* * *

 

The girls refuse the offer of the sleigh ride. Nellie Oleson and Laura Ingalls, dressed in their town best, their faces turned to Almanzo like a pair of half moons. "No thank you," Nellie says politely, though her voice wavers, uncertain. She glances from beneath her thick, curling eyelashes at Laura, who slides her hands deep into her muff.

"We have errands to run for our mothers," Laura explains, and Almanzo knows that she is lying, but when she looks at him, he nods. There is an understanding between the two of them, branching out ever since that first summer when he saw her with the horses, fearless.

"That is too bad," Cap says. "Before the winter is too heavy, we shall have to go sleighing, the four of us. At least once!"

"At least once," Nellie agrees, and when Cap and Almanzo drive away, Almanzo looks back over his shoulder to see Nellie yank at Laura's muff and hiss into her ear. Laura pushes back, and it seems to him that this is the way it has always been between these two girls, a patchwork quilt sewn with rivals and enemies and moments in town when their mothers approach him and say that neither Laura nor Nellie can be found. The Olesen girl and the Ingalls girl sneak off together; they keep their secrets.

Almanzo prepares to turn back to his horses and the road ahead, but Cap is sitting in the sleigh, comforted by the weight of the furs over his lap. His cheeks are flushed with blood from the chill, and he is smiling now, pleased.

"You knew they would refuse," Almanzo says, finally looking away.

"How could I have known?" Cap replies. "Manly, you really are quite woolen in the head." He sits up straight when he sees the path that Almanzo is taking, back towards the stables. "No! We're not going to end this now. We are going to go sleighing!"

"Cap," Almanzo says, "why in the world would the two of us go sleighing?"

He can hear Cap's answer from behind him. "Because we have the sleigh, we have the horses, we have the snow. What is there to do _other_ than go sleighing?" This is the way Cap thinks sometimes, the way he assumes inevitability based on nothing more than pieces of suggestion. _We're going to have a good crop this year_ , he says, and more often than not, he's right.

"What indeed," Almanzo says, and then shrugs with one shoulder. "Hold on tight then. The ground outside of town is slippery and I don't want you falling out onto your head."

Cap whoops. 

They drive out past the homesteads, past white boulders of farms. Smoke is curling from each house's chimney, or begins to as folk return from town and church. Almanzo can see his neighbours in the distance, but he keeps off the well-trodden roads where the snow is sooty wet beneath his horses' iron shoes. He pushes them through the unmarked fields. Dakota land is low and grassy. Ice floats in the wide-swathe rivers. In the spring Almanzo likes to go off on his own and return three days later with a good catch: walleye, pike, and bass that his sisters can dry and salt, and then put into their cellars for when times are hard.

He doesn't hear anything from Cap for a while, but when Cap speaks again, Almanzo goes still.

Cap moans.

"What are you doing?" Almanzo asks gruffly. He looks over his shoulder and he sees Cap squirming in the heap of furs, his head thrown back slightly and his eyes half hooded. Realization strikes Almanzo at the same time Cap lets out another little moan.

Cap's upper body twists around as he pushes himself onto his knees. Almanzo can see one hand grasp the side of the sleigh while the other begins to move restlessly beneath the furs. Oh dear God, Almanzo thinks, and he is fixed at a point between horror and gut-peeling desire. Cap is touching himself underneath the furs. Cap is touching himself underneath the furs _when they are outside, where anybody can see them._

"My fingers," Cap says, and then huffs a little laugh. "They feel so good when I push them inside of myself. One finger is nice but two is even better. Three -- ah!" He bows his head.

Almanzo's skin burns, and it is not because of frost.

"I'm quite tight," Cap says. "Am I always like this? When you put yourself inside of me, am I this tight for you?"

All the blood rushes to Almanzo's head. He hears a roaring sound, like a Charleston train, but there are no trains nearby. "You're as tight as a beggar's purse," he says. "Cap, be careful. Someone might see you."

"No one is around," Cap pants. "And I'm safe under the furs. No one can see what I'm doing. Oh God!" he says in a rush. "I have the third finger inside now. I can feel myself opening up." Almanzo tries to keep his eyes focused on where they are going, but he can't stop looking behind him. It's a damn lucky thing his horses are so well-trained that they need no more than a hint of guidance from him; who knows what might happen to the sleigh otherwise. He watches in the corner of his eye as Cap sits back down, bearing himself onto his three fingers. He shudders visibly.

This must be what Job felt like, Almanzo thinks, his fingers painful where they grip onto the reins. All he can do is sit in front and listen to Cap writhing around on the clever twisting motions of his own fingers. And Cap can be very clever indeed. Almanzo listens as Cap explores new angles, and he knows when Cap has found the perfect one when he lets out a sound that's almost like a wail. Almanzo's heart lurches into his chest just hearing it. It's the same noise Cap makes when Almanzo is fucking him to completion against the stable wall, when his legs are around Almanzo's waist and he's splattering come all between them, jerky and overwhelmed.

The terrain grows bumpy, but each heave of the sleigh only serves to push Cap's fingers deeper inside of himself, it seems, and in no time at all Almanzo is purposefully picking the rougher areas, forcing shameless cries from Cap's mouth. When Almanzo looks at Cap again, he sees Cap pink and tousled, his lips shiny with spit. Cap meets his eyes.

"Manly," he says, "I need something bigger. I need something to fill me all the way up."

There is a groan in the wintry air. It takes Almanzo a long, desperate second to realize that it is his own. "We are going back right now," he says firmly. "We are going back to my bed and I am going to fuck you." Cap whimpers helplessly at the lewd word. "I'm going to fuck you until you can't stand anymore. You'll need my help to get out of bed, and when I am helping you onto your feet, I'm going to bend you over onto your toes and fuck you twice."

"Yes," Cap says. "Yes, please, Manly, yes."

He keeps his fingers inside of himself as they make the journey home. He holds himself open and ready, and when they are nearing town, he says, "I-I can't hold it back. I'm going to come."

"Then come," Almanzo says, and with his permission Cap goes tense and breathless, his shoulders trembling in an off-beat cadence as he spills himself into the furs. There are townsfolk in the distance, none close enough to pay them any attention. Almanzo looks at Cap, beautiful in his wrecked desire, and then at the people. If only they could know, he thinks. But he doesn't want them to know. What he and Cap Garland have between them is their own private business. He won't share it with anyone.

 

* * *

 

When Cap has trouble standing, Almanzo carries him back to the bed. Cap laughs and tugs at a sweaty lock of Almanzo's hair. "I'm so glad that you are a man of your promises," he says. "But how am I going to explain this to my ma?"

"Tell her you went racing against the horses and you pulled your muscles," Almanzo suggests, lying beside Cap. The bed is a bachelor's bed, only big enough for one, so he ends up tugging Cap half on top of him. "It seems like the sort of foolish hare-brained thing you would do."

"Probably," Cap says. He kisses Almanzo's bare shoulder. "I had a dream last night. Do you want to hear it?"

Almanzo is quiet, and Cap takes that for agreement. 

"We were traveling, just the two of us," Cap says. "We had packed our homes and we were heading west. You, me, and the horses. There was so much land and there was so much sky, but we didn't stop. We kept on heading west, and then there was the sea. You wouldn't stop driving. You were going straight for the sea, and I cried at you to stop. We were going to drown, I said. I didn't know how to swim. But you drove all of us right into the water, and I was afraid and angry."

"I saw the eastern sea once," Almanzo says. "It wasn't so impressive."

"This one will be," Cap says. "And in my dream, I thought we would drown but we didn't. We just rose up and up." He stretches out his limbs and yawns. "Wouldn't that be something? Leaving De Smet and going westward. I couldn't really do it, o'course. I've got my ma and my sisters. And you wouldn't really say yes to joining me. You'd call it another one of my stupid schemes." His voice trails off. "It's a nice thought though, isn't it? Real nice."

"I would do it," Almanzo says, and it's not what he meant to say but the words come out of him anyway. "If you asked. I would do it for you."

Cap lifts up his head. The smile he gives Almanzo could melt a river, could transform worlds.


End file.
